Over the last several decades, the microelectronics industry grew immensely and had a global impact on advancing commercial industries. Sales of semiconductor components recently made up a substantial fraction of the gross domestic product for many developed countries, which was an outcome of a continual decrease in the size of metal-oxide-silicon field effect transistors (MOSFETs). The miniaturization of MOSFETs resulted in an exponential increase in integrated circuit (IC) performance and a corresponding decrease in the cost of microelectronics as predicted by Moore's Law. MOSFET scaling leveraged performance increases due to reduction of the physical dimensions of the MOSFET device. For example, transistors were produced with a minimum channel dimension of 30 nm. At this size, atomic-scale defects determined the performance and reliability of the transistors, and conventional characterization methods previously used to obtain operating performance of larger transistors were inadequate.
Until a few years ago, continued scaling of microelectronic devices implicated only a crude understanding of atomic-scale defects, which is no longer the case. In current nano-scale device structures, understanding the relationship between atomic-scale defects and electronic transport is aided by intimate knowledge of the chemical, physical, and electronic structure of the device. As an example of the need for understanding devices on the atomic-scale, it has been widely reported that room temperature MOSFETs can exhibit drive current fluctuations that are as large as 75% of an amplitude of the drive current. These fluctuations, which are referred to as random telegraph noise, limit further MOSFET scaling. However, the origin of the fluctuations is not understood. To advance development of microelectronics, overcoming the detrimental effects of atomic-scale defects will occur by understanding such defects, and amelioration of these defects involves detailed spectroscopic knowledge of their creation kinetics. Current technologies largely are inadequate at this level of detail.
Accordingly, methods and equipment for characterization of atomic-scale defects would be advantageous and would be favorably received in the art.